Although FDI constitute about 49 per cent of investments into the sector, its share in the sector has been declin- ing. The development, according to Groupe Nduom Research (GN- Research), could threaten Ghana’s National Tourism Development Plan (2013-2027) that re- quires 1.3 billon dollars annually. “The sector recorded no new project for the first quar- ter of the year [2017] although GIPC recorded 95 new FDI projects in the pe- riod,” analysis from GN Re- search authored by Samuel Kofi Ampah stated.

It mentioned the areas that enjoyed new projects as the services, manufacturing, gen- eral trading and liaison, building/construction, export trade and agriculture sectors. The poor performance has been attributed to lack of in- centives for enterprises in that sector, mainly due to the repeal of the Promotion of Tourism Instrument (LI 1817) that gave the GIPC the power to grant tax incentives to businesses in the sector. That LI per records, stimu- lated private sector invest- ment in the sector through construction, refurbishment and upgrading of tourism infrastructures. Institutional and regulatory lapses in the country arising out of bureaucracy has also been blamed for the no new investment in the tourism sector for the first quarter of 2017. “The 2017 World Bank Doing Business report shows that, Ghana’s performance on almost all the institutional and regulatory components is declining. For instance, factors such as ease of starting business, dealing with construction permits, registering property, protecting minority investors and enforcing contracts have fallen,” the analysis by GN Research stated.

The sector’s share of FDI in value terms fell from 1.59 per cent in 2013 to 0.06 per cent in 2014, while its total contri- bution fell from 7.6 per cent to 6.7 per cent. In 2015, the sector’s share however increased to 25.8 per cent, generating 2.7 billion dollars in revenue and contributed significantly to the economic growth rate of 4.2 per cent recorded. “This was short lived as the sector’s share fell sharply to 0.03 per cent in 2016 with direct and total contribution to GDP decreasing from 3.3per cent and 7.8 per cent to 3 per cent and 7.1per cent respectively” the GN Research analysis indicated. It has in view of the situation, asked the government to give financial incentives in the areas of tax, depreciation subsidies, subsidized tariffs and concessions under specific projects or geographic locations to ensure a satisfactory return on investments. It is also proposing long term opportunities that should includes multi-hotel resorts; one each at the Volta Estuary; Brenu beach in the Central Region; Cape Three Points area in the Western Region; Lake Bosumtwi in Ashanti, the Volta Lake Basin, Dodi Island, Dwarf Island, Digya National Park, Melinli Peninsular, Amedzofe and Wli-falls in the Volta and the Accra marine drive project.

“Aside the financial incentives, government should enhance the security of investments in the sector by ensuring stable economic and political environment since the sector is very sensitive to them,” it advised.

Burundian President Pierre Nkurunziza announced his intention to seek a disputed third term more than two years ago, spawning a period of unrest marked by extrajudicial killings, a failed coup, and ethnic division. Given repeated assurances from government officials and the dearth of media coverage, you would be forgiven for thinking that period ended some time ago. It did not. The country’s population continues to face armed violence, civil and human rights abuses, while food insecurity and economic hardship persist. People are still fleeing to neighbouring countries: The UN predicts the number of Burundian refugees will top 500,000 by the end of the year.

On 14 June, the Commission of Enquiry on Burundi set up by the UN Human Rights Council reported that violations such as the excessive use of force, disappearances, and arbitrary detention by security services – which all surged amid street protests in the weeks after Nkurunziza’s April 2015 announcement – have been continuing.

According to government fig- ures, some 720 people have lost their lives since the start of the crisis – many during the heavy-handed crackdown around a failed coup attempt in May 2015. Human rights workers put the number at more like 1,200. The level of violence has subsided but there continue to be sporadic killings from gunshots and grenades, which the police often attribute to criminal activity. Fatsah Ouguergouz, who chairs the commission of enquiry, told the Human Rights Council that testi- monies collected in refugee camps “show that since late 2016, human rights violations are often committed in a more clandestine, but equally brutal, manner” than in 2015. “For example, a victim told us that in 2016, a police com- mander threatened him in the following terms: ‘I can kill you. I can bury you and no one will know,’” Ouguergouz said, explaining that his team had not been given permission to carry out investiga- tions inside Burundi itself. “There are continuing reports of disappearances. Dead bod- ies are also still regularly discovered,” he added. “According to several testimonies, it is often difficult to identify the bodies. The modus operandi seems to be the same: the victims have their arms tied behind their backs and sometimes their bodies are weighed down with stones to make them sink once they are thrown into a river.”

The disappeared

In Bujumbura, residents gave IRIN first-hand accounts of loved ones going missing. “My husband received a phone call from people he doubtless knew. He left in our car with a friend and never came back. Even the car was never found,” said the wife of a man close to the government who asked not to be named. “I contacted his old friends – the police, the army, the intelligence services – but to no avail. I’m losing hope, and what [bothers] me the most is that some of his old friends in the police and army don’t answer my calls.” Another woman in the capital told IRIN about her brother, who had been a policeman for a long time. “He was arrested as he came home from work, after meeting some relatives,” she said. “Up to now, I have no information about where he went. I don’t know what to do. We haven’t even been allowed to conduct customary mourning rituals. We are crying in secret.”

The commission said refugees had told its investigators of torture sessions carried out by the National Intelligence Service and the police, some- times assisted by the Imbonerakure – the ruling party’s youth wing. The testimony was graphic: “clubs, rifle butts, bayonets, iron bars, metal chains and electric cables [used] with the result that some victims’ bones were broken and other victims lost consciousness; long needles stuck into victims’ bodies or unidentified products injected into them; nails ripped out with pliers; burns; and many abuses inflicted on male detainees’ genital organs.”

The commission also noted that those in exile included many journalists as well as the leaders of most opposition parties, one of which, the Movement for Solidarity and Democracy, was slapped with a six-month suspension in April.

Humanitarian crisis

Dwindling food supplies have left more than a quarter of Burundi’s population, 2.56 million people, in a state of severe food insecurity. Some three million Burundians require humanitarian assistance.

In April, four people died of starvation in Muyange II, an area close to the capital, according to local leader Augustin Ntirandekura. Asked to explain the lack of doors and windows on some of the houses in Muyange II, one resident said they had been sold to pay for food. Yields from the first of the country’s two annual agricultural seasons were down an average of 25 percent, but experts at the Integrated Food Security Phase Classification (IPC) system say this only partly explains the widespread food insecurity.

“The current socio-economic crisis characterised by inflation, shortage of jobs, the depreciation of the Burundian franc and a shortage of foreign currency, aggravated by a malaria epidemic and the displacement of populations are factors which influence the level of food insecurity and create a need for a coordinated multi-sectoral approach,” the latest IPC bulletin says.

Market prices of basic foods are between 30 and 50 percent higher than the same period last year, according to the IPC, which did, however, project much better yields from 2017’s (just beginning) second harvest.

More supply can’t come a moment too soon. At food-stalls in the capital, IRIN found maize selling for 1,200 francs ($0.70) per kilogramme, against 400 francs less than two years ago, while green beans were up from 700 to 1,200 francs over the same period.

Depressed economy

“When the current crisis started, the expatriate family I had been working for since 2010 left the country and my husband lost his job because his boss said he didn’t have enough money to pay him,” said Nicelate Ngayabosha, who lives in the northern Bujumbura district of Kamenge. She said she struggles to feed her family now and that her children only eat one meal a day, which makes it hard for them to concentrate at school. Adrienne Niyubuntu, a mother of three who said her husband had travelled to the Democratic Republic of Congo because he could not bear to see his children go hungry, explained how she now has to rely on charity. “These days, it’s my relatives who try to give me food, because I have no income,” she said.

Budgetary aid suspensions imposed by the European Union and some of its member states in 2016 are also having a serious impact on Burundi’s economy, according to analyst and anti-cor- ruption activist Faustin Ndikumana.

“The sanctions have deprived the government of a major source of foreign currency,” he told IRIN. The EU suspen- sion affects a 43-million-euro package of direct support destined mainly for projects in energy, rural development, public finances, health, and justice reform. The European Union had been funding about half of Burundi’s annual budget.

Knock-on effects

Ndikumana said the lack of foreign currency had led to shortages of fuel, medicines, and other essential goods.

“The national agricultural investment programme has not received its planned funds and the agricultural sector is unable to pay dividends,” he said. “We are in a situation where people are impoverished yet certain dignitaries continue to believe that things are normal because they are receiving their salaries or allowances.”

The International Monetary Fund has projected zero growth in Burundi in 2017 and 12.4 percent inflation. Fuel shortages and electricity cuts have eased now but in April and May they were se- vere. “We had to queue outside petrol stations. Sometimes, we even waited all day without getting any,” said taxi driver Thomas Ndayiragije.

The fuel shortages also exacerbated food inflation. According to the national statistics institute, food prices went up more than 10 percent in less than a month in April. All this has grave implications for jobs and livelihoods. “I’m having trouble making ends meet every month be market stall, said her boss had had asked her to look for customers to buy his potatoes. “He has already told me that if things go on like this I will lose my job,” she said. “We used to sell around 200 kilogrammes or more of potatoes a day. Now I sell less than 20.”

A cement trader in downtown Bujumbura said his sales had also fallen by a similar 90 percent. “I think fewer people are building houses,” he ex- plained.

No way forward

For exiled anti-corruption activist Gabriel Rufyiri, there is only one way forward.

“Only inclusive negotiations will provide a favourable solution to these problems of food shortages. Because once the political issues are sorted out, donors will be quick to lift sanctions against the government,” he said, speaking to IRIN from Belgium.

A government-led “inter-Burundian dialogue” involving 26,000 citizens and 600 hours of meetings produced a final report in May, asserting that establishment of a constitutional review commission as a sham.

Meanwhile, mediation efforts led by the East African Community are at a standstill, both because some in the opposition regard the facilitator, Tanzanian former president Benjamin Mkapa, as biased and because Nkurunziza sees the process as a violation of Burundi’s sovereignty.

This week, UN Assistant Secretary-General Tayé-Brook Zerihoun told the Security Council that implementing the report’s recommendations would likely lead to an escalation of the crisis.

Government denial, meanwhile, showed no sign of abating. Albert Shingiro, Burundi’s ambassador to the UN, told the council: “the entire country is calm,” that 150,000 refugees had returned home, and that there was no longer a political crisis at all.

It’s a Monday evening in Bamenda, the main city in troubled English-speaking Cameroon. The gates of the Vatican Express bus depot are shut, just like five other coach companies in town. Any other day and there would be at least five long distance buses ready to leave for the rest of the majority French-speaking country. But once a week there’s a nearcomplete shutdown of businesses and public services. Mondays are now “ghost town” days throughout Cameroon’s two anglophone regions: Northwest and Southwest. The boycott action has been called by a civil society coalition protesting English speakers’ “oppression, marginalisation, and deprivation.” They are demanding the return to a pre-1972 federal constitution, when the entire western part of the country was self-governing. On this ghost town day, one bus company, Professional Drivers Express, is defying the ban. Fifty passengers are squeezed onto a single 30seater, negotiating its way through the massive potholes outside the depot, heading to the capital, Yaoundé, an eight-hour drive away. It is an uneventful trip until near the end. A few kilometres from the presidential palace, the seat of executive power, a middle-aged man stands up and begins to declaim. “The struggle must continue,” he says. “If we stop now, we will be buried by La République. Francophones will dominate us even more.” Before he sits down, he issues a final warning, which is greeted by silence from his fellow passengers: “But let us make sure we don’t end up dead or arrested!”

The cause

Breaking the boycott does not mean abandoning the cause. But it does demonstrate the contradictions triggered by this long-running crisis, in which six protesters have been shot dead, dozens injured, hundreds arrested, and two regions further impoverished. Cameroon is a bilingual country; the constitution gives equal status to both English and French. But the English-speaking Northwest and Southwest regions are seething over their alleged marginalisation; accusing the government of giving preferential treatment to Cameroon’s eight other administrative regions. The discontent, known in Yaoundé as the “anglophone problem”, is fanned by the perceived lack of investment by the government; a lack of political advancement for anglophones; and the general difficulty faced in the job market by those for whom French is not their first language. Public unrest began in October 2016. It started as a strike by lawyers and then teachers over the “francophonisation” of the regions’ legal and education systems. It quickly coalesced into a general outcry over poor governance, “cultural genocide,” and the heavy-handed crackdown by the authorities.

Western Cameroon is 20 percent of the population but reportedly produces 60 percent of Cameroon’s GDP, and has little to show for it. It was under British colonial rule after World War I and was administered as part of neighbouring Nigeria until choosing to join French Cameroon in a 1961 referendum.

No, Non

For a crisis that ostensibly has language at its root, there has been little talking. Dialogue between the government and an umbrella opposition group, the Cameroon Anglophone Civil Society Consortium, collapsed way back in January when the authorities began rounding up protest leaders. Internet access in the anglophone regions was also switched off, on the grounds that activists were using social media for “spreading false news”. It was restored only in April after an international campaign #bringbackourinternet and economic losses estimated at $3 million by the NGO Access Now.

President Paul Biya, in power for 35 years, has described anglophone activists as “extremists”. He has used antiterrorism legislation, which carries the death penalty, to charge some protesters. More than 25 people are currently facing trial at a Yaoundé military tribunal. These include consortium leaders Felix Agbor, a human rights lawyer, Fontem Neba, a university lecturer, and activist Mancho Bibixy. The government has ignored calls by human rights groups for their release. Two other leaders, Tassang Wilfred and Bobga Harmony, have fled to Nigeria and the United States respectively. They are now calling for the independence of “Southern Cameroons” (see map) – otherwise known as Ambazonia – a reflection of the growing secessionist sentiment among anglophone Cameroonians at home and abroad.

Religious schism

That radicalisation has extended to the ghost town protests. They are increasingly being enforced by intimidation. In March, more than 60 shops were burnt down in Bamenda’s food market by unidentified youths as punishment for breaking the boycott, according to a government official. There have been similar arson attacks in Limbe and Mutengene, in Southwest region. Schools have been burnt down too, and only remain open now with police acting as guards.

Even the Church has been split by the protests.

Anglophone bishops who publicly sympathised with the protests have been charged after making statements that the government said could “compromise national unity”. The government adjourned those hearings when confronted by a threatened march on the courts in Bamenda and Buea, the main city in the Southwest region. But the National Episcopal Conference, led by Archbishop Samuel Kleda – appointed as a mediator by Biya in February – has swung behind the government, condemning the protests and calling on children to return to school. On a tour of the western region, parents reportedly told Kleda they would only send their children back to classes when protest leaders were freed. The consortium has said dialogue can be based “on one agenda only – the practical modalities for the putting in place of a two-state federation, and in the presence of representatives of the United Nations, and the UK”. Political scientist Mathias Owona Nguini argues that the “perspective of a francophone-anglophone federalism based on two federated states corresponding to the former respective territories of France and Great Britain is not negotiable”. But given the deadlock and poisoned political atmosphere, external mediation may be the only way forward.

In careful comments last month, the UN’s special representative for the secretary general in Central Africa, François Louncény Fall, encouraged the government to consider the release of detained anglophone leaders as a confidence-building measure. In a statement he also called on the leaders of the protest movement to engage, “to find a consensual and lasting solution to the situation”. To help achieve that, Fall said the UN was ready to “continue to accompany the two parties in their dialogue efforts”. As both sides struggle to find a common language of peace, grievances fester and a country is increasingly divided.

Former President John Dramani Mahama is being blamed for NDC’s defeat in the general election. The simmering tension and anger in the opposition NDC after its defeat last year does not appear to have been tamed by the formation of a committee to probe the humiliating loss.

Even before the committee comes out with its report, the finger pointing has resurrected with the NDC MP for Yunyoo in the Northern Region, Joseph Bipoba Naabu blaming former President Mahama for the party’s electoral defeat.

“[Former Communications minister] Omane Boamah, what experience does he have in politics?” he said, adding he cannot win “even” a constituency election.

“But the President was listening to such people…that is why he lost so miserably, [and] so comfortably,” he told Adom News’ Parliamentary Correspondent, Abednego Asante Asiedu Tuesday. Earlier this week, the NDC’s 2016 elections Campaign Co-ordinator and National Organizer Kofi Adams sought to douse the flames by pointing to the silver lining in the agi- tations for the leadership to account for the monies meant for the 2016 campaign.

“I am quite happy [because] it shows the party is very strong and they [youth] are ready to bring the party to power immediately,” he said. But his predecessor disagrees. For Yaw Boateng Gyan, this is just a manifestation of the fact that there were more cracks in the NDC than there were in the NPP when it was in power.

Speaking on Abusua FM in Kumasi last Wednesday on a wide range of issues affecting the NDC, Mr. Yaw Boateng Gyan said, “believe me…the NDC was much more divided than the NPP but we pre- tended as if all was well and decided to talk about the NPP’s troubles.”

“People who dared to talk publicly about the party’s challenges were vilified and sidelined, how were we going to hear diverging opinions internally?” he asked.

“If we had paid attention to what people, our own party people, were saying, I am telling you the NDC wouldn’t have been in opposition by now,” he observed.

“The other issue has to do with the way and manner our people were talking to the electorate…very arrogant and disrespectful, how would we have appealed to the voters?” Mr. Boateng Gyan added.

“Kwame, some of us couldn’t talk because they said we had been voted out of the execu- tive position of the party and so we shouldn’t talk…a lot of things went wrong.”

“The grassroots of the party were angry because they were not resourced to work for the party, rather outsiders and strangers were enjoying all the party’s resources for campaigns.”

“For example, common party billboards…the party had to send people from Accra to come to my hometown in Sunyani to erect “If you look at all these factors, must you be told that the party was deeply divided?….we were even lucky the grassroots of the party didn’t rise up in anger against those sent from Accra to fix campaign mate- rials at the local level,” he said.

The dust appears not to be settling soon as a former chairman of the Party Dr. Kwabena Agyei appears to be muddying the waters even further. Speaking on an Accra-based Starr FM, he noted that some leading members of the NDC deceived former president Ma- hama into thinking he was in a comfortable lead when everything showed he was losing that election.

While intra-party agitations often follow electoral defeats, leadership determines how soon a party stays in opposition or otherwise.

Ghana’s first President Dr. Kwame Nkrumah creatively used religion as a tool to weave a tapestry of political culture. In so doing he laid a foundation that basically spared inter-religious conflicts in Ghana that has been experience elsewhere in Africa and beyond. These observations were made March 26, 2017 by Dr. E. Obiri Addo, a professor of Pan- African Studies at Drew University, Madison, New Jersey. He was speaking on the theme “The Politics of Reli- gion in Kwame Nkrumah’s Ghana: An Enduring Legacy” at the Africana Transdisciplinary Theological Colloquium organized by the Drew Theo- logical School.

Dr. Obiri Addo pointed out that because Ghanaians are religious by nature, the belief system has been able to influence both traditional and contemporary politics. He cautioned against the demo- nization of non – Christian religions by the principle of “Christian triumphalism,” which could create religious antagonism and disturbed the peace Ghana has enjoyed thus far.

Faced with the daunting task of nation building in an ethno-religious fragmentation of his new Ghana, Dr. Obiri Addo theorized that President Nkrumah rightly concluded that Ghana would be well- served as a secular nation through a gorgeous mosaic of existing religio-cultural system, in order to avoid institu- tionalization of any particular religion. “Nkrumah aimed for secular modernization,” he said.

Acutely aware of the Ghanaian respect for religious and political leadership, Nkrumah employed religious semantics and myths to bridge the gulf between himself and his followers, a trend that became a bone of contention between President Nkrumah and his detractors including missionary churches. President Nkrumah was accused of building a personality cult out of his socio-political and reli- gious idealogy known as Nkrumaism. Consciencism, one of Nkrumah’s books, and the emergence of the Ghana Young Pioneers, a national youth movement with slogans such as “Nkrumah never dies,” and “Nkrumah is our Messiah,” did not sit well with some, especially the Church.

Taking a cue from Dr. John Mbiti’s refrain, “African people do not know how to exist without religion,” Dr. Obiri Addo observed that Nkrumah did not wholly embrace Karl Marx’s description of religion as the “opium of the masses”, but rather promoted a new secularism suitable to the new Africa.

Drawing from Nkrumah’s school days at Lincoln Uni- versity, Pensylvania, Dr. Obiri Addo posited that Nkrumah came to power in Ghana with a complex atti- tude towards (foreign) religion. It was therefore unsurprising that he eventually used traditional religion and spirituality to connect with and to his people and followers. Nonetheless, Nkrumah’s own philosophy ingrained in political pri- macy, precipitated in phrases of Christian parodies such as “seek ye first the political kingdom, and all things shall be added unto you,” and “Blessed are they who are im- prisoned for self-government, for theirs is the freedom of the land,” referring to his imprisonment after declaring “Positive Action.”

Dr. Obiri Addo also pointed out the role played by Nkrumah in elevating tradi- tional religiousity to new heights and awareness. Liba- tion was introduced, alongside Christian and/or Muslim prayers with traditional appellations and incantations, drums et al at State functions. Wearing of kente cloth, batakari and other traditional costume characterized Nkrumah’s African Personality and Identity. These and some, according to Dr. Obiri Addo solidified the belief of the Church about the “Divinization of Nkrumah” that some deemed sacrilegious.

Dr. E. Obiri Addo is the au- thor of “Kwame Nkrumah: A Case Study of Religion and Politics in Ghana (Lanham: Roman and Littlefield, 1997.)

There was hope last year that the election of President Faustin-Archange Touadéra would bring real change to the troubled Central African Republic. But 12 months on, he has been unable to extend his authority beyond the capital, Bangui, and the rest of the country is as lawless as ever.

Fatimatou Issa and her family witnessed that violence first-hand last month. They’d heard rumours of trouble for days, but when the ex-Séléka rebels drove up, they had no time to react.

At first, they assumed the men had come to fight other rebels. But as bullets whizzed around the ethnic Fulani village of Mbourtchou, in CAR’s Ouaka Province, it was clear who they were targeting.

“They turned up in vehicles and were shooting everywhere,” said Issa, 26. “My husband fought back to protect the community, but he was shot in the head.”

Sweating in the dusty heat, Issa was standing outside a flimsy straw and bamboo hut at Elevache camp for dis- placed persons in nearby Bambari, a market town of red-earth streets and mud-brick houses 400 kilometres from Bangui.

“Many of the families here have been given nothing,” said community leader Mohammadou Saibou, who fled the same attack. “When we arrived, the Red Cross pro- vided us with some food, but there wasn’t enough for everyone.”

Getting worse

A year on from democratic elections that promised a new era in CAR, the crisis is deteriorating, with armed groups in control of the vast majority of the country and civilians like Issa and Saibou the principal victims.

Renewed fighting between rebel groups in the central and eastern provinces of Ouaka and Hautte-Kotto is now dangerously close to reaching Bambari, CAR’s second largest town.

Together with fighting in Kaga Bandoro in the north, and Ouham-Pendé in the northwest, the number of dis- placed people has passed 411,000, the highest level since the crisis began. Back in 2013, the conflict pitted the Séléka, a predominantly Muslim coalition of rebel groups from the north, who overthrew former president François Bozizé in a coup, against anti-balaka – a network of Christian self-de- fence militias that rose up in response. Today, that dynamic has changed. After a de facto partition between Christians in the south and Muslims in the north, hostilities between the two groups have decreased. In its place is an explosion of fratricidal fighting between different factions of the Séléka, who were disbanded in 2014 and driven out of Bangui.

“Against the supposed Christian versus Muslim logic of this conflict, we now see Muslim groups fighting Muslim groups, divided on ethnic lines and fighting for territory,” said Richard Mon- crieff, Central Africa project director for the International Crisis Group.

In Ouaka and Hautte-Kotto, the two main groups vying for control are the Union of Peace in the Central African Republic (UPC), dominated by Muslims from the Fulani ethnic group, and a coalition of rebels led by the Popular Front for the Renaissance in the Central African Republic (FPRC), dominated by Muslims from the Gula and Runga communities.

The UPC and FPRC split back in 2014, after FPRC leader Noureddine Adam demanded independence for CAR’s predominantly Muslim north, a move rejected by UPC leader Ali Darassa. Tensions festered when Darassa rejected FPRC attempts to unify ex-Séléka factions last October, and turned critical a month later after clashes around a gold mine in Ndassima.

Ethnic complexion

Since then, violence has assumed an ethnic complexion with both groups targeting civilians associated with their opponents. The FPRC’s at- tack on Issa and Saibou’s village came after an even more brutal assault in Bria, 100 kilometres to the east.

Over three days, 21-23 November, the group singled out and slaughtered Fulani, a his- torically nomadic group who are falsely stereotyped as “foreigners” and “Chadians.”

To Saibou, who worked as a trader before fleeing the FPRC, that argument makes no sense.

“Our community has been here throughout the history of the country, even before independence,” he said, as a group of men prayed beside him. “So why do they say we are not from this country?” Fulani that remain in Bria are now trapped in enclaves, and there are growing fears the same, or worse, could happen in Bambari.

FPRC forces are currently closing in on the town from two separate directions: Ippy from the northeast, and Bakala from the northwest. Their intention is to dislodge the UPC, “liberate the country from foreign armed groups”, and declare Bambari the capital of an independent state called the Republic of Lagone, or Dar al-Kuti.

The UPC are attempting to prevent their advance, but committing their own atrocities in the process. In Bakala, they executed 32 civilians and captured fighters in December, according to a report by Human Rights Watch. Around 10,000 civilians fled to nearby Mbrés, Grimali and Bambari, with several thousand others camping out in the bush.

“They arrived on a Sunday afternoon and were attacking the Christian community and Gula [people] too,” said Christine Passio, a 45-year- old Christian who fled Bakala last December. Homeless, she now lives in a straw hut near Bambari’s airstrip, surviving on meagre food rations tied up in a burlap sack.

“We had no time to take our belongings, and we spent three weeks travelling in the bush, carrying our children with no food,” she said.

For the time-being, Bambari remains conflict-free. But fighting between the two groups has poisoned relations within the town’s Muslim community, with the UPC targeting Gula and Runga they consider sympathetic to the FPRC.

“It’s the first time w’eve had this kind of division within the Muslim community,” said one humanitarian worker, who asked not to be named. “Every time there is a convoy to Bria or Bangui, they [Gula and Runga] are taking the opportunity to leave. Others have fled to the Christian side of Bambari”.

My enemy’s enemy

At the back of Notre-Dame des Victoires, a small Catholic church that doubles as a displaced persons camp for Christians, 32-year-old Zoyondonko Sogala Deya, a Gula, was remarkably calm. Until recently, the father of three wouldn’t have dreamt of stepping foot in the area, which lies in the middle of Bambari’s anti-balaka-con- trolled territory.

But after Deya’s house was looted last month by UPC fighters, he said he had little choice but to seek refuge among the Christian community. Asked if he worried about living among anti-bal- aka, he shook his head. “I feel better living here with Christians than there with Muslims,” he said. “We are all scared of the UPC”.

For the time-being, Deya’s trust in the anti-balaka isn’t quite as crazy as it sounds. Wanting to share in the spoils of war, or to simply push the Fulani out of CAR, anti-bal- aka elements in and around Bambari have forged an opportunistic alliance with the FPRC, sworn enemies just a few months ago.

Sitting in a restaurant near his house on the west side of Bambari, Marcelin Orogbo, general-secretary of the anti- balaka in Ouaka, said the only thing he wants is “Ali Darassa gone”.

Knocking back bottles of Mokaf, a beer brewed in Ban- gui, he praised the FPRC for their “discipline” and argued that their objective in Bam- bari is simply “to kick out the UPC”.

How long that alliance lasts remains to be seen. When IRIN brought up the FPRC’s stated goal of dividing the country, Orogbo quickly rowed back. “If they go beyond their objective of getting rid of Darassa, we won’t accept it,” he said. “We are strictly against the division of the country. CAR is one.”

Major UN test

To stem the rising tide of violence in central and eastern CAR, the UN’s 13,000- strong peacekeeping force, MINUSCA, is fighting two separate battles in one of its biggest tests to date.

The mission, which has faced criticism of inaction despite its mandate to protect civil- ians, has drawn figurative “red lines” on the roads leading into Bambari to stop the FPRC from advancing. It has also issued an ultimatum to UPC combatants inside the town to leave.

“We are ready, willing and able to take over the city and we will do it,” said the UN’s bullish head of office in Ouaka, Alain Sitchet. “Bambari is going to be a weapon-free city.”

Others are less optimistic. The FPRC has already broken through one “red line” and, according to a well- placed source, is circumventing MINUSCA’s positions on the main roads by advancing to Bambari through the bush. While reports this week suggested Ali Darassa has now left Bambari, UPC combatants remain in the city in plain clothes, and others continue to fight the FPRC in nearby towns and villages. In an earlier interview with IRIN, Darassa – a towering figure scrunched into a plastic chair in a white robe – was deliberately ambiguous about his plans.

“If the civilian population want me to leave, I will leave,” he said, adding that protection of Bambari’s Fulani population remained his priority.

Touadera’s dilemma

For its part, the central government appears almost completely powerless. It shows that “having a relatively well-accepted election produces a legitimate government in [the capital] Bangui, but it doesn’t give you much more,” said Moncrieff.

To try and rein in the different armed groups, a dialogue over disarmament, demobili- sation and reintegration has been initiated by President Touadéra, a former maths professor.

But previous DDR schemes in CAR have failed, and few are optimistic about the cur- rent attempt.

The FPRC, a new Ouham-Pendé-based armed group called Return, Reclamation, Rehabilitation (better known as 3R), and anti-balaka under the command of Maxime Mokom, have all boycotted the process.

Any measures ex-Séléka groups have taken to disarm have been “tokenistic”, said Lewis Mudge, a researcher with Human Rights Watch. “If you think about it, there is no reason for them to [dis-arm],” he added. “They are benefiting. The UPC might be in a defensive position, but the FPRC and the Patriotic Movement for Central African Republic (another ex-Séléka group) are benefit- ing from conflict.”

The underlying grievances driving conflict have not been tackled either, according to Moncrieff.

“One problem is the total lack of economic opportunity in the provinces, and the other is citizenship,” he said. “Many people in the country have a feeling of being second-class citizens and being completely marginalised from the political classes in Bangui.”

CAR is mineral-rich, but for decades has been a byword for underdevelopment. The continued violence is deepening poverty in a country where half of the 4.6 million population is already dependent on humanitarian aid.

The camps for displaced people scattered across northeast Nigeria are supposed to provide safety from Boko Haram violence. But for many women the threat is no longer the jihadists: The danger is inside the camps, and stems from the attitudes of men in general.

Fatima Mohammed* is the “acting women’s leader” in sprawling Bakassi Camp in Maiduguri, the capital of Borno State and birthplace of Boko Haram. She says she’s seeing increasing rates of domestic violence – disputes she’s expected to step in and mediate.

Sewing a prayer cap with the distinctive pattern from her hometown of Gwoza, she recalled a typical recent case. It underlines both the domestic tensions of camp life, and the easily bruised egos of men, which can all too readily flare into violence.

The example was this: A woman’s husband had found work putting up tents in another camp, and they agreed to invest his wage in a small trading business – a common practice among the displaced, who often set aside part of their meagre rations for sale so they can earn some money for medicines, cooking oil, firewood, or any of their many other unmet needs. The business worked. But the man grew violent, resentful that it was his wife who was making the money. After one beating his wife mocked him “for not having [any] work.” That kicked off more abuse, and he also banned her from the market. That’s when Fatima was called in.

“We told him he would only be spiting himself and his children if he prevented her from going to market.” She also advised the woman not to “mock” or “make [her husband] less of a man.” The issue of the beating remained unbroached.

Men being men

Abubakar Abdulahi*, an employee of the State Emergency Management Agency, laced his fingers over the bridge of his nose and sighed: “Men don’t know how to handle having their role change… this is a very sensitive issue.”

Having worked in several of the internally displaced person (IDP) camps that dot Maiduguri, Abubakar has been thrust into a number of domestic issues.

Speaking with Fatima about the state of affairs in Bakassi, a camp of 21,000 people, he was unsurprised when she reported: “there are months when the food distribution is late and the food is exhausted”. As a result, “women ask their husbands to find some food or some small money, and the men get angry and frustrated because they can’t,” Fatima said, adding that she is usually only called in to adjudicate when “the fighting gets out of hand.”

Miriam Zannah*, who works with the USAID-funded Northeast Regional Initiative in neighbouring Yobe State, said women’s roles are changing as a result of their new responsibilities as widows, orphan caretakers, and breadwinners.

Both Miriam and Abubakar advocate “women’s empowerment” programmes – development schemes that teach women how to sew caps or tailor clothes. But they have both witnessed the backlash from men.

Picking his words carefully, Abubakar explained that “men feel less like men; they always complain that NGOs are giving preference to women.”

Empowered?

The bias towards “women’s empowerment” is not intended to undermine men’s sense of self, but is rather a result of the demographics of the camps’ adult population, which is overwhelmingly female.

The programmes are also an easy sell to the donors for the aid organisations operating in the underdeveloped north. Maternal mortality rates in the region are among the highest in the world and women’s literacy barely cracks double digits, way behind the rest of the country. The development programmes have not radically altered the lived experiences of women. But “having to cope with being jobless is hard on men,” said a sympathetic Fatima.

The evidence bears her out. A survey conducted by Voices 4 Change in 2016 found that men in Nigeria believe their masculinity is determined by their ability to provide for their family. The turmoil that has roiled the northeast since the Boko Haram insurgency began in 2009 has played its part in upending traditional order. Tens of thousands of people have been killed, some 1.7 million have been displaced, and more than five million will face crisis levels of food insecurity in the coming months.

Trauma and domestic violence are mutually reinforcing, according to a blog by Maame Esi Eshun at the Africa Program of the Wilson Center.

But “the government has no idea how to cope with this issue,” said Abubakar. In- stead, domestic abuse cases are referred to community leaders, camp managers, or the police.

That doesn’t solve the problem. In Nigeria, as in most other societies, gender-based violence is ingrained, as are the attitudes associated with it.

Survival sex

In 2012, it was estimated that one in three Nigerian women had experienced “some form of violence, including battering and verbal abuse, emotional and psychological abuse, marital rape, sexual exploitation, or harassment within the home.”

It’s not just violence that women in Bakassi are forced to contend with, but also sexual exploitation. That can range from being turned into “cheap wives” for men in the surrounding communities, where poor families feel under pressure to marry off their daughters, to rape and “survival sex”.

In nearly every camp, residents complain about short- ages of food and services. Accompanying the scarcity is a power dynamic that subjects vulnerable women to the authority of the largely male, relatively wealthy camp management team, and the security services.

Survival sex – the exchange of sexual favours for basic material needs – is not unique to Nigeria. But after being assured of anonymity, NGO workers throughout the region often let out exasperated sighs and describe how camp guards trade exit passes with female residents in exchange for a proscribed visit to their tents.

A member of the Civilian Joint Task Force, a vigilante group that works alongside the military in Borno, told IRIN plainly: “security forces are often laying with women… they are raping them, or not raping, but taking advantage, because for these girls, anything is a big deal.”

Those in charge of food distribution, too, force young women to weigh the value of an extra ration (or even the full ration that they’re entitled to) against their dignity. Pre-marital sex is still considered taboo for women in the region, so there is a heavy reputational risk.

Cheap wives

But marriage provides no safety from exploitation. As Mohammad Aliyu*, a CJTF member noted, there is enormous pressure on poor families in the camps to marry off their daughters in order to receive the bride price. “Whenever women reach the age of marriage, they are given, to reduce the family liability,” he said.

The result is that the average bride price has tumbled from $190-$290 to $20-$30 at the current black market exchange rate of the naira. This low barrier to entry has created opportunities for the most unscrupulous marital entrepreneurialism. “Men from town come to the camps and pick themselves cheap wives,” said Mohammed. He estimates that 40 percent of the marriages end in divorce within a few months, once the men grow bored of the women are often forced to return to the camps and their families. Their prospect for a future marriage is much reduced – especially if they have fallen pregnant.

“IDP camps are for IDPs – outside men shouldn’t be let in!” said Rina Mohammed*, an aid worker and protection expert.

Rina said that although that seems like an obvious step, it hasn’t been adopted because “camp managers either don’t care, see it as a positive solution, or are profiting from it.”

Africa, the world’s poorest continent, faces many security challenges. But its leaders are not slow to intervene in crises when they can, as Yahya Jammeh in the Gambia is now discovering.

His refusal to accept electoral defeat on 1 December has culminated in a coalition of West African troops crossing the border from Senegal, and an ultimatum that the advance will continue to the capital, Banjul, unless he steps down. There have been weeks of intense diplomatic activity, with delegations of leaders flying into Banjul with offers of amnesty and exile, in return for his peaceful departure from state house.

His refusal led to momentous events on Thursday. First, there was the swearing in of election winner Adama Barrow in the Gambian embassy in Senegal; next a UN Security Council resolution endorsing military action; and finally the crossing of the border, just hours later, by Senegalese troops and Nigerian aircraft.

There has been both principle and expediency in the political and military action by West African states, although intervention on this occasion is made easier by the fact that the Gambian armed forces number just 1,000 men.

But, when Jammeh finally goes, it should be remembered that he was the last remaining West African leader to have come to power in a coup, in a region that has now witnessed peaceful political transfer via the ballot box in two key countries, Nigeria and Ghana.

Since the 1990s, the 15-member Economic Community of West African States has launched complex and controversial military interventions in Liberia, Sierra Leone, and Mali, and imposed sanctions following coups in Guinea, Niger, and Guinea-Bissau.

ECOWAS, as with other regional organisations, is part of the security architecture of the African Union, the continent’s overarching political body, which seeks African solutions for African problems. The AU has an ambitious – and underfunded – crisis management system that includes conflict prevention, mediation, and, when all else fails, intervention. But that final option requires agreement by member states, endorsement by the UN, and funding from donors – conditions that are not always fulfilled.

Nevertheless, Africa has proved remarkably proactive. The following are examples of some of the continent’s key peacekeeping operations:

Liberia

1990–1997: To end a brutal and regionally destabalising civil war, West African coun- tries took the then-unprece- dented step of sending in a peacekeeping force, the Eco- nomic Community Cease- Fire Monitoring Group (ECOMOG).
It secured Monrovia and in- stalled an interim govern- ment, but the rest of the country was controlled by warlord Charles Taylor’s NPFL. After at least 13 failed peace attempts, a ceasefire agreement was finally reached in 1996. It laid the groundwork for elections in 1997, which Taylor won, largely in the hope that elect- ing him would end the blood- shed. Despite ECOMOG’s many problems, including a reputation for looting, it had considerable support among Liberians. Nigeria shouldered much of the financial and military burden.Sierra Leone
1997-1999: Sierra Leone was a related conflict, but a less successful intervention by ECOMOG. The RUF rebellion, infamous for its hand-cutting, began in 1991 supported by Taylor. A coup in 1997 brought members of the RUF into power. It was a pe- riod of lawlessness and chaos. ECOMOG intervened, but the RUF launched “Operation No Living Thing” and in 1999 entered Freetown. ECOMOG eventually forced them out, but the final defeat of the RUF was down to British forces who arrived in 2000.

Lesotho

1998: Post-election unrest led to a mutiny by the Lesotho Defence Force, which was put down by an intervention by South African and Botswanan forces. But the action was controversial. While South Africa claimed the intervention was a Southern African Development Com- munity (SADC) peacekeeping mission, the regional body has not yet agreed proposals related to coups in its governing treaty. South Africa justified the intervention on the grounds that it, and other neighbouring countries, had been invited in by the Lesotho prime minister.

Somalia

2007–present: The African Union Mission in Somalia, or AMISOM, is a peace enforcement mission. It is mandated to support the Somali government in its battle against al-Shabab militants and train the Somali security forces. AMISOM has successfully squeezed the territory under al-Shabab control, but the militants are far from defeated. AMISOM’s 22,000- soldiers, currently drawn from Uganda, Burundi, Djibouti, Kenya, and Ethiopia, are under-manned and under-equipped. Dependent on international funding for salaries and UN logistical support, several countries have threatened to withdraw as a result of pay cuts imposed by the European Union.

The Comoros

2008: African Union troops from Tanzania and Sudan made an amphibious landing on the Comorian island of Anjouan to topple a renegade military leader. He had refused to hold elections under the auspices of the AU and instead declared himself president of Anjouan, in defiance of the federal government. Elections were subsequently held at the end of the year. The AU contingents were withdrawn, despite requests by the central government for them to stay as a stabilising presence.

Guinea-Bissau

2012-2017: The ECOWAS Mission in Guinea-Bissau, known as ECOMIB, was de- ployed in the aftermath of a military coup to help estab- lish a civilian-led transitional government in this notoriously unstable country. Elections were held in 2014, and the 650-strong ECOMIB mis- sion was initially meant to end in June 2016. The deployment, made up of troops from Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Togo, and Niger, was extended to allow for the retraining of the Bissau- Guinean military.

Mali

2013: After repeated failed peace initiatives, ECOWAS deployed the African-led International Support Mission to Mali (AFISMA) to support the government threatened by separatist rebels and Islamic militants in northern Mali. It was not a success. The UN was lukewarm about the intervention. AFIMSA never reached the required troop strength and was hamstrung by logistical problems. The real turning point in the conflict was the intervention of French and Chadian forces. AFISMA was subsequently folded into a much larger and better-resourced UN operation.

It’s been a tumultuous year: shock election results, the Brexit referendum, a nervy global economy, and a raft of extremist attacks – all of which have had impacts on migratory movements and the way countries have responded to them.

There is no sure way of predicting where the next refugee crisis will come from, but some strong policy trends have emerged. And what is striking is how similar those policies are becoming, despite widely varying contexts. In the developed world, populist right-wing parties have successfully scapegoated mi- grants and refugees and convinced electorates they must be deterred at all costs. In the developing world, this has turned migrants into powerful bargaining chips that can be used by origin and transit countries to extract maximum sums of development aid and other concessions.

How all this plays out in 2017 will depend to some extent on how successful moderate politicians and civil society leaders are at pushing back against policies that will do little more than deflect migratory movements from one country to another. Here are the key developments we expect this coming year:

Europe outsources migration policies
For all its flaws, the EU- Turkey migration agreement will be the blueprint for the EU’s continuing strategy of outsourcing its migration problems. The accord was intended to give the EU breathing space while it developed more sustainable policies, but member states have failed to reach consensus, and the deal with Turkey will be shored up even if it means turning a blind eye to human rights abuses by President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government. Meanwhile, similar deals with third countries will be sought in an effort to close off the Central Mediterranean, now the most visible irregular migration route into Europe.

In the absence of a functioning central government in Libya, the main departure point for smugglers’ boats, the EU has had to look further afield and is now in the process of negotiating agree- ments with Mali, Niger, Nigeria, Senegal, and Ethiopia. As part of the Partnership Framework for coop- eration with third countries launched in June this year, we’re likely to see the EU pushing for more cooperation agreements with countries of origin and transit in Africa in 2017. “It’s a looking-out- wards approach because we don’t know how to deal with it internally,” says Elizabeth Collett, Europe director of the Migration Policy Institute in Brussels. “There’s more interest in prevention and deter- rence than finding alternative [legal pathways]. National elections and domestic politics will prevent pursuing those alternatives.”

Greece and Italy remain the holding cells
Agreements with third countries are unlikely to yield results in the short-term (in fact it’s questionable how much impact they’ll have even in the long term). In the mean- time, the only plan for deal- ing with continued arrivals to Europe is to keep them for as long as possible in Greece and Italy, but the pressure on both countries is already approaching breaking point. Alexander Betts, director of Oxford University’s Refugee Studies Centre, predicts that in 2017 the EU will push for quicker processing and returns of asylum seekers from Greece to Turkey and stepped-up patrols in the Aegean. He added that the referendum outcome in Italy and the resignation of Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who was “a voice of moderation in the refugee space”, could deal a blow to progressive asylum policies in that country. Early elections are likely to be held in June 2017 and could yield a victory for the anti-immigration Five Star Movement party.

The Trump effect on domestic immigration policy

It will take time for Donald Trump to deliver on many of his election promises on immigration. At this stage, it’s unclear how many of those promises he will even pursue.

In interviews, he’s indicated that deporting between two and three million immigrants with criminal backgrounds would be his first priority. It’s a big drop from his campaign pledge to deport all 11.3 mil- lion undocumented migrants living in the US but it’s still probably an inflated number, according to Doris Meissner, who heads the Migration Policy Institute’s US immigration policy programme. “Our number of those with criminal backgrounds is about 820,000, of which 300,000 could be categorised as serious criminals and [deporting them] is the priority of the current administration anyway,” says Meissner. Since being elected, Trump hasn’t repeated his promise to rescind President Barack Obama’s executive order exempting migrants who arrived in the US as children from deportation, known as the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals (DACA). Meissner says there has been strong mobilisation in de- fence of the DACA pro- gramme from some surprising quarters, including business leaders, the military, and Senator Lindsey Graham, a prominent Republican who is co-sponsoring a bi-partisan bill to preserve the status of the DACA population through legislation called the Bridge Act.

Meanwhile, the state of California and several major cities will likely push back against any efforts to scale up deportations by refusing to cooperate with the federal government and providing free legal aid to people trying to fight deportation. “It’s a clever strategy because our immigration court system is already so backlogged that people who fight deportation will be in a very long line. It could bring the system to its knees,” says Meissner.

The Trump effect on regional forced displacement

Under the Obama administration, the US has partnered with Mexico to intercept and deport Central Americans fleeing gang violence in the Northern Triangle (El Sal- vador, Honduras, and Guatemala) before they reach the US border and claim asylum. The Mexican government may be less willing to work with a Trump administration in the wake of highly offensive comments about Mexican immigrants he made on the campaign trail, but Meissner predicts that Mexico’s own interests may be served by continuing to police its southern border. But while Mexican immigration authorities have the power to deport Central Americans, they have no deportation agreements with countries in Africa and Asia, whose citizens are increasingly traversing South and Central America to reach the US. The numbers of Haitians, Africans, and Asians claiming asylum at the US border is likely to continue growing in 2017.

Trump’s appointment of retired general John Kelly as homeland security secretary is also significant for migration towards the US border. Having only recently stepped down as head of the US Southern Command, responsible for US military activities in South and Central America, he will be well aware of the drivers of displacement in the region and the need to address those drivers, in addition to ramp- ing up enforcement. He has been a champion of the Alliance for Prosperity, a $750 million programme of assistance to Central America, and is expected to moderate some of Trump’s more extreme positions on irregular migration.

The Trump effect on refugees

The biggest immediate Trump effect will likely be on the US’s refugee resettlement programme, currently the largest in the world. Trump has promised to suspend admissions of refugees from several predominantly Muslim countries, including Syria.

“Scaling back refugee resettlement is something Trump could do quite quickly, and if he really wanted to he could shut down cases that are already in the pipeline,” says Meissner.

Trump could also slash US contributions to the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, which currently depends on the US for 40 percent of its funding. He is also unlikely to show the same leadership that Obama has in terms of appealing to other nations and the private sector to fund refugee responses.

UNHCR and other international NGOS feel the squeeze
Declines in funding from the US (and potentially even from the EU if populist par- ties win more elections in 2017) could see UNHCR and other major international NGOs playing a less promi- nent role in the international refugee regime. Jeff Crisp, a former head of policy at UNHCR, predicts this could open the way for other actors, particularly in the development, civil society, and private sectors to fill some of the inevitable gaps in support to refugees.

Betts of the Refugee Studies Centre says UNHCR will reach a crossroads in 2017 and will need to develop a clear strategy for weathering the current political climate or risk irrelevancy. Cuts in funding and resettlement places as well as more na- tions ignoring international refugee law will put the agency in “a very challenging position,” says Betts.

“At the moment, its response predominantly has been to reassert the old principles and values. My concern is that while they might be, in absolute terms, the right values, in the current climate, they will struggle to stick to those objectives without a clear political strategy.”

The impact of former UNHCR chief, Antonio Guterres, taking the helm as UN secretary-general in 2017 may be a greater focus on the underlying causes of dis- placement, says Betts. Guterres could also help foster “a favourable political space” in which to develop the global compacts on refugees and migration that UN member states committed to in September.

More forced returns

Greater controls on migration in Europe, the US, and Aus- tralia have not gone unno- ticed in the developing world, where the vast majority of refugees are still hosted. Pos- sible cuts in UNHCR’s fund- ing and continued flows of refugees from Syria, South Sudan, Iraq, and Afghanistan will add

In November, Kenya post-poned the closure of Dadaab refugee camp, home to 261,000 Somali refugees, but a new deadline is looming at the end of May and, despite the lip service to voluntary repatriations, Dadaab’s resi- dents are faced with the real threat of forced return to insecurity in Somalia in 2017. Afghan refugees in Pakistan are also in the midst of a temporary reprieve from forced return. A repatriation programme that has already seen more than half a million Afghans returned in 2016 has been put on pause until 1 March. But Pakistan has set the end of March as the dead- line for all Afghan refugees to leave the country before it starts deporting them. Meanwhile, Iran has also been returning large numbers of undocumented Afghans in recent months and Europe plans to scale up deportations of failed Afghan asylum seekers in 2017.

With worsening insecurity in Afghanistan, Tuesday Reitano of the Global Initiative against Transnational Organised Crime predicts many returnees will attempt to migrate again. “People generally feel insecure and the desire to move is high and there’s a lot of money to be made there [by smugglers]. I think we’ve been not paying enough attention to what’s going on there.”

Message over matter

While there’ll be a continued trend of hardening attitudes towards migrants and refugees in 2017 in many parts of the world, it’s worth remembering that the priority for governments is to be seen to be taking action to deter migrants. Creating that perception with electorates is often more important than delivering real results in terms of bringing down immigration figures.

Trump’s promise to build “a big, beautiful wall”, which almost certainly helped win him the election, is already being dismissed as unfeasible and largely symbolic. And the EU continues to over-promise the extent that agreements with third countries can deliver a drop in arrival numbers. “The messaging of all these policies is overtaking real capacities of what’s feasible,” says Collett of the Migration Policy Institute. “We’ll see it more and more in 2017, this gap between messaging and implementation.”

The Kenyan government has postponed its closure of the Dadaab refugee camp by six months, but the reprieve does not reverse its ultimate deci- sion to send home 261,000 Somali refugees, despite the loud protest by human rights groups.

The international community appears to have given up on a search for an alternative to closing Dadaab, even though the mass returns promised by Kenya, starting in just four months’ time, are likely to generate a humanitarian crisis.

The donors have also been slow to provide promised funding to Somalia to help improve conditions in a coun- try that is already struggling to cope with 1.1 million internally displaced people. Joseph Nkaissery, cabinet secretary for the interior, told a media briefing on Wednesday that insecurity in Somalia and the country’s ongoing elections, were creating a “delicate situation”, which required an extension of the government’s end of November deadline. “However, ongoing voluntary repatriation will continue uninterrupted,” he said, refer- ring to an existing programme facilitated by the UN’s refugee agency, UNHCR, and its NGO partners.

Over the next six months, the government plans to verify the refugee population in Dadaab and relocate all non-Somalis to other camps in the country. In the fourth and fifth month of the extension period, it will complete the repatriation of all Somali refugees to Somalia, “in a humane, safe and dignified manner”, a government statement said. “This doesn’t really change anything,” Human Rights Watch researcher Laetitia Bader told IRIN. “As long as Kenya denies Somali refugees secure legal status and threatens to close camps and deport them, refugees will feel they have no choice but to go home with UN return support cash instead of being forced out with nothing,” she noted. “Extending the Dadaab camp closure deadline is better than deporting refugees in two weeks’ time. But with the new 31 May deadline hanging over them, Somali refugees will continue to feel that they have to leave.”

Bad Choices

Human rights groups point out that even before the elec- tion, planned for the end of the year, Somalia was neither safe for return, nor did it have the public service infrastruc- ture to cope with an influx of arrivals from Dadaab.

In a veiled rebuke to UNHCR, Amnesty Interna- tional said in a report on Tuesday that “the dangers associated with the armed con- flict in Somalia have been greatly underreported to the refugees by the UN and NGOs facilitating the return process from Dadaab to Somalia.”

The Kenyan government’s revoking of Somali refugees prima facie right to stay in Kenya, the pressure applied to refugees to leave – including a reduction in Word Food Programme rations – means “the return programme is not voluntary and is in fact forced”, Khairunissa Dhala, one of the authors of the report, told IRIN.

Packing up

Since December 2014, more than 19,000 refugees have returned home under the assistance programme. According to a poll carried out by the Kenyan govern- ment and UNHCR, in July and August, only 25 percent of refugees said they were willing to return. Nevertheless, there is a feeling of inevitability in Dadaab that the 25-year-old complex will close. “I have packed my stuff and I’m ready to return, even though I know very well that Somalia is not yet stable. There is violence, persecution still going on; no good schools on the other side [of the border],” Aden Farah, in Kambioos camp, told IRIN. “But there is a lot of fear here in Dadaab that the government will force us back, so I want to return when conditions are good.” That means taking advantage of the UN’s relocation package, which provides a cash grant per head for each family. It is a significant inducement, especially for those who are fairly recent arrivals and believe they can pick up their lives once back in Somalia. But the reality is that restarting a life is far from easy.

Harder than imagined

Fatuma Hamid came to the southern Somali port city of Kismayo in September, after more than 20 years in Dadaab. When IRIN met her outside the Jubaland Refugee and Internally Displaced Persons Agency, she was close to tears. The 60-year-old mother of four was paid $600 in Dadaab and used $500 of that to settle her debts. When she arrived in Kismayo, she was given another $300, but found it was not enough to cover her rent and food.

What was free in Dadaab now has to be paid for, and that has taken some getting used to. Once a week, she walks from the IDP camp to the agency to see if they can help.

“I always wanted to return, but I never imagined I would return home to such a situation,” she said.

“Life was good at the camp. All my four children went to school. They all had secondary education.”

But in the last few years it became a lot harder. The cut in food rations in August last year played a part in her decision to leave, she said. Mohamed Noor, vice chair- man in the Jubaland Refugee Agency is sympathetic, but there’s not much he can do to help.
The Jubaland government had earlier asked for the suspension of the repatriation programme as it was already overstretched.

“The returnees have been going from one government ministry to another looking for help. They cannot get the services they had in Dadaab camp,” Noor explained. “If more people are brought to Kismayo, the ones who were here before them will have nothing.”

Insecurity

Insecurity is another major worry. Many of the returnees are not from Kismayo. But the threat of intimidation and forced conscription by the al- Shabab militant group, which remains firmly rooted in the countryside, forces them to stay as IDPs in the city. Guray Hefow Abdi had a shop and cattle in her hometown of Dinsor, in Somalia’s Bay region. But war and drought forced her across the border to Dadaab in 2011.

She took advantage of courses run in the camp and found work with a number of international agencies looking after the physically and mentally challenged; an experience she hoped would help her find a job in Kismayo.

But in making the journey by road from Dadaab to Kismayo, through al- Shabab checkpoints, she re- alised that her certificates and commendations were a liability. She hid what she could in her robes, and got rid of the rest.

“It was too risky to carry the certificates through the al-Shabab-controlled territory,” she said. “These documents are my only hope and my future.” Despite her certifications, she is still looking for work.

The vulnerable

The Amnesty report high- lights a spectrum of vulner- able groups among the refugees who the Jubaland authorities will struggle to settle.

This includes secondary school students (in a region with few schools and teach- ers); those with disabilities; and minority ethnic groups like the Bantu, who are out- side the clan system.

“Some returnees have chil- dren who were in school in Kenya. If they cannot get education for their children in Somalia, then we fear some of these children could become criminals,” Noor told IRIN.

Worst still, some may join al-Shabab and other groups with extreme ideological views.”Dhala said Amnesty International was calling on the Kenyan government, in the short-term at least, not to close Dadaab.

“In the longer term, we’re calling on them to seek more sustainable ap- proaches to refugees that ends the encampment pol- icy, allows rights to integra- tion within the host community, including the right to work,” she said.